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Monday, December 19, 2011

There's a fantastic sense of fun and wonder in Mission:
Impossible - Ghost Protocol and when you consider that the flick's director is
Brad Bird, the man behind some of the best Pixar films (The Incredibles,
Ratatouille) and The Iron Giant (one of my favorite animated
films) it isn’t hard to understand why.

The film revolves around Tom Cruise's IMF Agent Ethan Hunt
and his team of spies, who are trying to thwart a plot by a villain bent on nuclear war
(The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Michael Nyqvist, who is
somehow bland and compelling at the same time) after their entire agency has
been blamed for a bombing in Moscow and disavowed. There's a scene where one of
the signature Mission Impossible tapes/messages fails to self-destruct on its
own, a great little metaphor for the wounded organization.

I took notes on the film's plot but trust me when I say it's
not all that important (and not in a bad way, either). The best part of the
film and its real stars – although all of the actors are great,
especially Jeremy Renner – are the stunts (a scene on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa,
the tallest structure in the world, will have your stomach in knots) and
the gadgets. Man, the gadgets. The team behind Skyfall, the upcoming
Bond film, should watch M:I4 for gadget inspiration. The aforementioned tower
scene where Hunt uses high-tech sticky gloves and another where Hunt and Simon
Pegg's bumbling Benji Dunn use a sophisticated screen to hide from a guard in
plain sight are particularly fun due to the imaginary technology on display.

Other than a few minor things, including confusion about
events that occurred between this movie and the previous one, I wholeheartedly
enjoyed this film. One thing I do have to bring up that’s more of an
observation than a critique is all of the jumping in this film – I count
at least six scenes where people jump off of or through some kind of structure.
I guess jumping off things is kind of the Mission Impossible series’
trademark, but this film’s team took it to 11.

According to Bird's IMDb profile,
this was his first live action film and I think he's proven he can handle them
beyond a doubt. I'm excited about his planned follow-up live action flick, 1906, based on the San
Francisco earthquake that happened that year. The only downside I'm
anticipating is that we won't get to see any high-tech gadgets.

Man I didn't even mention the gadgets, which were incredible and ridiculous in all the best ways. And man, that tall building scene was epic for sure. I respect the fact that Cruise did his own stunts on that one.